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Cleveland's infamous Torso Murders: 80 years later, the fascination endures (vintage photos)
On a crisp fall morning in 1935, two young boys made a grisly discovery in Kingsbury Run, an area in southeast Cleveland, Ohio. The boys, ages 16 and 12, had been playing catch but lost control of the ball. To retrieve it, they ran down a hill affectionally called Jackass Hill, and were stopped in their tracks by the sight of a man’s headless body. When police arrived, they'd find another emasculated, decapitated corpse. Officials didn't know it yet, but the two bodies marked the first in the official tally of a serial killer to be dubbed the Cleveland Torso Murderer.
The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of twelve known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run.
Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, then Cleveland's Public Safety Director, the murderer was never apprehended.
The official number of murders attributed to the Cleveland Torso Murderer is twelve, although recent research has shown there could have been as many as twenty. The twelve known victims were killed between 1935 and 1938.
Some investigators, including lead detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been thirteen or more victims in the Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh areas between the 1920s and 1950s. Two strong candidates for addition to the initial list of those killed are the unknown victim nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake," found on September 5, 1934, and Robert Robertson, found on July 22, 1950.
The victims of the Torso Murderer were usually drifters whose identities were never determined, although there were a few exceptions. Victims numbers 2, 3, and 8 were identified as Edward Andrassy, Florence Polillo, and possibly Rose Wallace, respectively. Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo were both identified by their fingerprints, while Rose Wallace was tentatively identified via her dental records. The victims appeared to be lower class individuals – easy prey in Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known as "working poor", who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle Depression-era shanty towns or "Hoovervilles" in the area known as the Cleveland Flats.
The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered the victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages.
In many cases the cause of death was the decapitation or dismemberment itself. Most of the male victims were castrated. Some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies, which caused the skin to become red, tough, and leathery. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, occasionally in excess of a year. In an era when forensic science was largely in its infancy, these factors further complicated identification, especially since the heads were often undiscovered.
During the time of the "official" murders, Eliot Ness held the position of Public Safety Director of Cleveland, a position with authority over the police department and ancillary services, including the fire department. While Ness had little to do with the investigation, his posthumous reputation as leader of The Untouchables has made him an irresistible character in modern "torso murder" lore.
Ness did contribute to the arrest and interrogation of one of the prime suspects, Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. In addition, Ness personally conducted raids into hobo shanties and eventually burned down Kingsbury Run, from which the killer took their victims. His reasoning for burning down the shanty towns was to catalog fingerprints to easily identify any new victims, and stated that it was also done to get possible victims out of the area in an attempt to stop the murders.
Four days after the shantytown burning, on August 22, 1938, Ness launched an equally draconian operation of questionable legality, where he personally dispatched six two-man search teams on a large area of Cleveland, stretching from the Cuyahoga River to E. 55th Street to Prospect Avenue under the guise of conducting city fire inspections. This area of the city had long been supposed as the location of the Torso Murderer's "laboratory." Among the detectives dispatched and charged to look for signs of the Torso Murderer's activity in the area were Detectives Orley May, Emil Musil, Peter Merylo, and Martin Zalewski – men who had worked the case from the beginning and must have felt the frustrations of the case most strongly. While the search never turned up any new or incriminating information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the Torso Murderer, the systemic search did serve to focus renewed public attention on the inadequate and unsanitary living conditions in the downtown Cleveland area. The teams uncovered hundreds of families living in hazardous fire traps without toilets or running water. The interests of social reform did ultimately come to light even if those of law enforcement did not.
At one point in time, the killer taunted Ness by placing the remains of two victims in full view of his office in city hall. The man who Eliot Ness believed was the killer would also provoke him by sending him postcards.
Most researchers consider there to be 12 victims, although some have counted as many as 20. Evidence suggests a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake" could be included. There was a second victim who was also considered to be a victim of the Torso Killer in 1950 named Robert Robertson due to the fact that his head was also cut off. Only three victims were positively identified; the other ten were six John Does and four Jane Does.
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